This is common in some auctions on eBay as well. I would think there would be a darwinian-induced decline in this practice, because these auctions look so amateurish and unappealing. But, you never know, maybe shouting sells crap better.
The point is this; if I’m writing something and I want it to appear as if I’m shouting, I’m quite likely to type it in caps, and I’m not at all unusual in doing that.
Therefore, when you see something typed in caps, it’s not at all unnatural to perceive is as appearing to shout. It makes perfect sense. It’s not a joke, it’s just the way many of us read and write.
That’s a non-sequitur. No one is saying that a person typing in all caps in ignorance of the shouting convention is shouting. What we are saying is that they can inadvertantly be perceived as shouting. Or at the least they are making work for their reader who has to read something and perceive it in accordance with conventions (which most of us do quite subconsciously) but then make the mental adjustment to account for the fact that the writer does not mean what they appear to mean from what they have written.
If I type “who left the curtain’s open?”, I am not giving possession of “open” to the curtains. I am just typing something that requires my reader to do the work of adjusting what I’ve actually written to conform to what I no doubt meant.
And going back to the readability issues; fast readers don’t see the letters, they see the words and the shape of the words, that’s why that trick works where they mix up the letters in the middle of words without significantly compromising readability.
You can’t do it nearly so easily with text entirely in caps and for the same reason, all-caps text is just not as easily readable - the uniform height and blocky shape of the letters makes it necessary to read the letters, not the words.
I recently got a degree through “long distance training”. There was a period where every letter the tutoring service sent me in response to my questions came in all caps. I pointed out that this is considered shouting and asked to please stop yelling at me.
The response said I was the first person to complain, that they’d never heard such a stupid thing and that their procedure says to write back in all caps so it’s easy to see which part of the message is the response.
I wrote back with:
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A few links to webpages in several languages indicating that all caps is yelling. One of those webpages happened to belong to one of the universities sponsoring the program.
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A list of every way in which I could tell their responses from my questions.
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A list of less-bothersome ways they could use to mark their responses, if they didn’t think those listed above were necessary.
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A reminder that I hadn’t finished paying and links to places indicating that I could legally drop out of the course, cut all payments and even get my money back at no cost to me on grounds of “the tutor yelled at me and kept yelling after I politely asked him/her to stop.”
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I also indicated that I’d assume that the reason nobody had complained is that calling someone “rude” is generally considered bad manners; if said rude person is your boss or your teacher, most people won’t dare complain. That doesn’t mean people enjoy being yelled at.
They didn’t write back. But the next time I sent a question, the response was written normally.
- … those listed above were enough, making more emphasis necessary.
Lest I be accused of being too ignorant to understand fundamental linguistics, let me emphasize that I did not say “Arabic doesn’t have sentences.” I said “Arabic has no sentences as we have them in English.” This is an important difference. In my previous note I started to explain that I was referring both to the fact that classical Arabic lacks punctuation and the fact that a sentence in Arabic can be complete without a verb (and there are no copulas, though I’m not sure that’s relevant here). I thought that was more than most people would want to know, though, so I stuck with the short explanation.
I knew someone in college who wrote his papers in all caps. I was dumbfounded that the prof would accept these papers. He was pre-law, so I figured it had something to do with many legal documents have a lot of all caps.
Brian
When I see text written all in caps, I don’t necessarily see it as shouting, I just see it as the douchebag writer is trying to emphasize every single word, thereby showing me the importance of the entire message. Of course, said douchebag writer doesn’t understand that by equally emphasizing every word, nothing stands out as terribly important relative to the rest, so I usually ignore the entire message.
Like when you install new software and you’re supposed to read the License Agreement*. Usually it’s typed all in caps, because the lawyers think that you’ll understand the gravity and import of the thing if EVERY SINGLE WORD IS EMPHASIZED EQUALLY. Um, no. Reading something like that is exhausting, so whether it’s a software license agreement or a messageboard post, I just don’t read them.
[*Does anyone actually read them, or just click “I agree” and get on with the installation?]
I worked with a bunch of ex-Navy communication specialists who typed in all caps all the time because they were used to doing so in the Navy messaging software.
All caps is inherently harder to read, although some people don’t believe that.
These guys had a lot of trouble capitalizing when they had to do so. I don’t mean trouble typing…I mean they didn’t know which words should be initial cap and which lower case. I realized they used all caps at least partly to avoid having to make capitalization decisions.
My boss at the time grumbled to me that people on the Internet ought to use caps because “it’s easier”; he was frustrated that people considered him to be shouting, and wanted everyone in the world to change to suit him. I told him he was outnumbered in a big way.
I didn’t tell him (but should have) that he might as well BE shouting if his attitude is that the whole internet should be harder for everyone on earth to read just so he doesn’t have to get into the habit of using the shift key.
:smack:
Sailboat
Somewhat on topic, the old WebTV interface for posting to Usenet forced all caps. That doesn’t explain web-based bulletin boards, tho’!
Perhaps you could tell him how to enlarge the words (in upper/lower case) via Start>All Programs>Accessories>Accessibility>Magnifier.
Might turn out to be a boon once he got the hang of it.
In the engineering field all notes and callouts are done in capitals. There is no lower case at all. It was the same in the past when drawings were done by hand.
Well, yeah. I am a loud talker. Frequently, I will slowly build up my volume to the point that someone will tell me “You’re shouting.” I don’t realize it until they say something.
That’s better than a low talker, a high talker, or a close talker.
Hmm. Is there a Mozilla extension that reformats all caps messages? It would be a godsend to many.
Maybe shouting is the wrong word. How about emphasising? Putting words in all caps comes across as trying to emphasis what you are typing. Kind of like shouting does in verbal communication.
I’d go with that. Saying ‘shouting’ may be a bit of hyperbole, but the emotional effect of the overemphasising is about the same as shouting.
Nah. I’m over 50 and my dearly departed Grandmother used to use caps in her letters a lot. Also underlines, squiggly underlines, exclamation points and dashes in odd places. Sometimes colored pens, now that I think about it.
I’d say that she just didn’t trust folks reading plain writing to add the vocal stresses exactly where she wanted them to be, but Grandma also had a need for the dramatic. When talking in person, she’d be raising her voice and watching to see how much she could get you worked up.
So caps are a BIG BLOCK OF SLOW DOWN AND WADE THROUGH THIS SLOWLY AND THEN REACT TO IT!!!. Calling is shouting is emotionally accurate. (You had to be careful to keep your voice calm and your answers measured when talking to Grandma. Give her any encouragement and she’d take you to Outrage in sixty seconds.)
Maybe an old COBOL user. 
…Is there a far talker? 
I knew a girl who was a high talker, lord have mercy. Mickey Mouse had nothing on her. She was the reason why my voice is so low pitched – I trained myself to talk a bit more low out of sheer horror. Not terribly logical, but then I was a very nervous child.
Tagging onto the OP though… come to think of it, the news in the 80’s when captioning was still new always seemed to run the captions in all caps whereas movies nowadays do the captions in sentences proper like. I don’t have TV or I’d check the local news to see if they still do that. Could someone check? Now I’m all curious.